


When in Doubt, Build a Deathtrap

by draconicsockpuppet



Category: Dwarf Fortress
Genre: Dubious Ethics, Gen, Social Anxiety, Stupid Dwarf Tricks, To Do: Flood Fortress With Lava
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:27:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26357941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draconicsockpuppet/pseuds/draconicsockpuppet
Summary: Sometimes you just want to flood a fortress with molten rock.
Relationships: Dwarven Engineer & Magma
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: We die afen and afen





	When in Doubt, Build a Deathtrap

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pepperdoken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pepperdoken/gifts).



"Fellow dwarves of Toastfurnace! I've brought you all here today to introduce you to our new gearmaker, recently migrated from Innsmuck. Everyone, this is Rigoth Autumnoaks. Now say hello."

"Hello, Rigoth Autumnoaks," said thirty dwarves with various levels of enthusiasm.

Rigoth fought the urge to run and hide; she'd never liked attention, and becoming a mechanic had seemed a good way to stay away from people and keep busy with interesting work. Did the Baron expect her to _talk_ to these people? Outside the tavern, even?

Well. She could sit through a lot of unpleasant conversations for the sake of unlimited glass to work with.

What followed was two hours of the most inane discussion Rigoth had ever been subjected to. Machines were useful for many things, but they wouldn't burp a baby or catch a cat (alive), and so far Rigoth had never seen one that could collect crops without mangling them beyond all repair. One dwarf actually wanted her to cure his existential despair with gears! Rigoth wasn't a noble. Comforting others wasn't her job!

She finally escaped with a long list the Baron had _helpfully_ written down of the suggestions from the meeting, and went to decide where to set up her workstation. The nice wide open spaces of the general-purpose workshop floors looked awfully threatening after all that talking. Rigoth wanted someplace she could block off and think for a while when necessary.

The miners at least understood. Sazir Trumpetgrove didn't try to hug her or talk at her, just listened to her short description and nodded with an easy, "I can do that." And a few days later it was done. Rigoth now had her own little cubby by the stairs, deep down by the magma furnaces, with a door that locked and a smooth stone floor and walls. She brought a slab of gneiss down from the masonry shop and set it up as her workbench, then stuck the Baron's list to the wall with some flour paste so it looked like she was working on the suggestions.

Marvelous.

Of course, she didn't spend much time there; most of her working hours were spent down in the cavernous hall of glass furnaces, a single layer above the magma sea and sweltering hot. The mayor wanted traps as far as the eye can see, and Rigoth complied until you couldn't cross ten paces of sand without getting a stack of serrated glass discs to the face. Toastfurnace's wealth was entirely derived from their endless production of green glass wares, and Rigoth took full advantage.

She also took a spare pick from the weapons stockroom, and in her downtime – more frequent, now that the surface traps were done – began to dig tunnels spreading out from her little cubby. It became a habit: lock the door, take the wall down, dig a while, put the wall back up, unlock the door. First she dug up to the lake on the third cavern level and built herself a set of waterwheels in the well-known infinite flow configuration. Then she started digging space for a pump stack.

The idea of Toastfurnace was still good. But the people – Rigoth couldn't handle all the expected social time. Whenever possible she'd hide in her bedroom, until the Baron took that away for being 'unfriendly'. Then she took to hiding in her workroom, and working on her… project.

Infinite power. Infinite glass blocks. A pump stack reaching from the depths of the great magma sea to the surface. What could possibly go wrong?

Well. Securing a food supply was important. The caverns had already been walled off, including the deep roads, but there were signs to point the way to Innsmuck and Guardstone and Dragoncrypt. Rigoth dug herself a little storeroom and filled it with food and booze, then pastured a donkey in a walled-off room filled with cave moss to carry it all for her. She'd be fine.

The day finally came to test her device. She installed a bauxite lever next to the stairs up on the surface by the trade depot, hooked it up to her pump stack, then settled in to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

She put a bow on the lever. Still, no one pulled it.

"It's not labeled," Sazir told her when she asked. "If you want it pulled, you've got to do it yourself or get the Baron to order it done."

Rigoth wasn't a monster; she'd build a deathtrap but she didn't want to activate it herself. With a shrug, she put a new lever down in the tavern. With all the alcohol and dancing and fisticuffs, certainly someone would bump it.

The lever remained stubbornly unbumped.

And then the goblins came, and serrated glass discs weren't enough to protect Toastfurnace. The dwarven settlement had no military, and no weapons beyond a multitude of traps and a few steel picks.

"I don't know what to do," the Baron told the dwarves of Toastfurnace as they gathered in the tavern to discuss their options. A few locked doors stood between the goblins and the main stairwell, and then… their chances weren't looking good.

Rigoth raised her hand. "I have something." She fought down an urge to shudder as everyone looked at her with hope. "First, we need to wall off the main stairwell."

"Have it done!" The Baron waved a few dwarves out, the fastest and strongest. "And then? Then what?"

Rigoth looked at her poor unused lever. "Then, we have magma."

* * *

Her magma deathtrap worked _perfectly._

It was just a pity that she hadn't built a way to drain it. Ah well. The caravan from Dragoncrypt could come through the caverns.

**Author's Note:**

> If you suspect Rigoth got stuck in one of [Those Meetings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg) at the beginning, you're right.


End file.
